[Rian Johnson’s murder mystery follow-up takes on the
self-styled founder class, with riotous results.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

OF COURSE GLASS ONION IS A BLAST. BUT IT CUTS DEEPER THAN KNIVES OUT,
TOO.  
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Alissa Wilkinson
November 23, 2022
Vox
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_ Rian Johnson’s murder mystery follow-up takes on the self-styled
founder class, with riotous results. _

Kate Hudson, Jessica Henwick, Daniel Craig, and Leslie Odom Jr. in
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. , John Wilson/Netflix

 

Alissa Wilkinson
[[link removed]] covers film and
culture for Vox. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics
Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.

There’s a song on the Beatles’ self-titled album — more commonly
called the White Album — entitled “Glass Onion,” and it’s a
bit of a head-scratcher. “I told you about strawberry fields / You
know the place where nothing is real / Well here’s another place you
can go / Where everything flows,” the song begins. It’s
self-referential, with nods to songs like “I Am the Walrus,”
“Fixing a Hole,” and “The Fool on the Hill,” and the lads
croon about “looking through a glass onion,” where you can “see
how the other half live.”

What does it mean, you might ask? Well, nothing, and that’s why John
Lennon wrote it, explaining in 1970
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“I was having a laugh because there’d been so much gobbledegook
about [the Beatles’ _Sgt. Pepper_ album], play it backwards and
you stand on your head and all that.” People had been reading way
too much into Beatles lyrics; Lennon wanted to screw with them a bit
by serving up cryptic lyrics that didn’t mean anything at all.
(Charles Manson didn’t get the joke and became convinced — or at
least convinced his followers
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that the White Album was actually the Beatles’ attempt to contact
him and his “Family,” and warn them about a coming race war;
eventually, this became the impetus for the infamous murders of Sharon
Tate, Jay Sebring, and three others on Cielo Drive. But that’s
another story for another day.)

[Three people look askance at a phone.]

Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr., and Kathryn Hahn in _Glass Onion: A
Knives Out Mystery._ 

Netflix

Anyhow, don’t read too much into the lyrics of the song — but
maybe read a little_ _because they seem to have furnished a bit of a
jumping-off point for Rian Johnson as he wrote and directed _Glass
Onion: A Knives Out Mystery_. It’s the sequel to his 2019 smash
hit _Knives Out_, and similarly, this film concerns a big mystery
with a big cast of characters. The only holdover from the first film
is Detective Benoit Blanc, played by a ludicrously accented Daniel
Craig, who looks like he is, once again, having a blast. (And who
wouldn’t? They shot in Greece during the pandemic.) This time,
he’s ended up at the island home of a tech billionaire named Miles
Bron (Ed Norton) with a bunch of Bron’s college friends for a
weekend away and some kind of unspecified surprise.

(Miles Bron is not exactly an anagram for a certain owner of Twitter,
but it’s not all that far off! But I’m sure I’m reading into
things.)

The fun of the _Knives Out_ series is, in large part, that you’re
just being invited to join a party. Yes, there are murders, but it’s
still a good time, and everyone seems to be having fun making the
movie. The guests aren’t just Norton and Craig, but Kate Hudson,
Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., and
Jessica Henwick, plus a whole lot of surprise celebrities who show up
for brief and delightful cameos. They’re all trying to solve the
mystery, and so are you. And in the end, it’s immensely satisfying.

In that way, it’s clear that Johnson is working in the long
tradition of the great Agatha Christie, who frequently populates her
mystery novels, led by detectives like Miss Marple and Inspector
Poirot, with casts of characters that represent people from across the
many social and cultural strata of the 19th century. There are
spinsters, doctors, educated gentlewomen, badly behaved cads,
servants, inspectors, ministers, you name it — all types who
sometimes subvert but more often fulfill the stereotype. And since you
know what each person’s characteristics are likely to be, it’s
much easier to sink into the mystery and enjoy it as it hums along.

Like Christie, Johnson puts a detective at the center — Blanc, in
this case — who seems a bit eccentric and easy to underestimate but
is actually very cunning and observant. Your job is to spar with him,
to try to solve the mystery before he does. All of that makes _Glass
Onion_ a blast and prompts the audience not just to sit passively but
actively take part in the movie.

But at the same time, both _Knives Out_ and _Glass Onion_ harbor a
bit of an edge as, I suppose, befits the title of the series. The
first film was not just a fun mystery-comedy; it was satirical, a
skewering of old money and a kind of pseudo-progressive type who
really just wants to preserve their own social standing. (Remember
the _Hamilton_ references?) The series got its start as a barbed
look into “how the other half lives,” as Lennon wrote.

[Three characters sit or lounge on beach chairs, but look suspicious.]

Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, and Janelle Monáe in _Glass Onion: A
Knives Out Mystery._ 

John Wilson/Netflix

For the second film, Johnson coasts on over to the world of
self-styled “founders,” which I think used to be called the
“creative class” — people who worship innovation, live by smoke
and mirrors, go around talking about moving fast and breaking things,
and get rich by means that are perhaps less than ethical. The film
takes great pleasure in skewering them all, slowly unpacking and
exposing their hypocrisy, stupidity, and banality.

Of course, there’s a layer of irony in jabbing at tech founders and
innovators when your movie is bankrolled and distributed
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one of the biggest tech stories of them all: Netflix, which has
altered the shape of cinema and entertainment irrevocably in the past
15 years or so. In fact, even this film is part of Netflix’s effort
to figure out how it will stay alive; it’s getting a one-week run in
limited theaters, followed by several weeks’ pause before it lands
on the streamer. An odd strategy for a sequel to a movie that sold
far more tickets than anyone thought it would
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return on its modest budget. Whatever Netflix’s strategy here —
perhaps an effort to sell out theaters in the one-week run, garner
tremendous buzz, and end up with lots of subscriptions from people who
wanted to see it in theaters and couldn’t get a ticket? — it’s
the kind of experimenting that today’s Silicon Valley types seem to
exult in. It’s exactly the kind of thing Miles Bron and his buddies
might try to do.

But then, maybe that’s the point? There’s a good chance
that _Glass Onion_ is, in a sense, satirical about itself — a
murder mystery with an edge that’s directed reflexively. All in good
fun, of course.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just having a laugh. There’s been
so much gobbledegook, after all. The joy of _Glass Onion_ is that
you can read into it, or just let it flow over you and enjoy the ride.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery _opens in theaters on November 23
for one week and then will premiere on Netflix on December 23._

 

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* rian johnson
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* founder class
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* glass onion
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* creative class
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